My father was not one to lose time. He sent at once for that rascal, the Frenchman. They told him mossoo was giving me my lesson. My father went to my room. At that time Beaupré was sleeping the sleep of innocence on the bed; I was usefully employed. I ought to mention that a map of the world had been ordered for me from Moscow. It hung on the wall; no use was made of it, and I had long felt tempted by its width and thickness. I decided to make a kite of it and, taking advantage of Beaupré’s slumbers, set to work upon it. My father came in just at the moment when I was fixing a tail of tow to the Cape of Good Hope. Seeing my exercises in geography, my father pulled me by the ear, then ran up to Beaupré, roused him none too gently, and overwhelmed him with reproaches. Covered with confusion, Beaupré tried to get up but could not: the unfortunate Frenchman was dead drunk. He paid all scores at once: my father lifted him off the bed by the collar, kicked him out of the room, and sent him away that same day, to the indescribable joy of Savelyich. This was the end of my education.

I was allowed to run wild, and spent my time chasing pigeons and playing leap-frog with the boys on the estate. Meanwhile I had turned sixteen. Then there came a change in my life.

One autumn day my mother was making jam with honey in the drawing room, and I licked my lips as I looked at the boiling scum. My father sat by the window reading the Court Calendar, which he received every year. This book always had a great effect on him: he never read it without agitation, and the perusal of it invariably stirred his bile. My mother, who knew all his ways by heart, always tried to stow the unfortunate book as far away as possible, and sometimes the Court Calendar did not catch his eye for months. When, however, he did chance to find it, he would not let it out of his hands for hours. And so my father was reading the Court Calendar, shrugging his shoulders from time to time and saying in an undertone: “Lieutenant-General!… He was a sergeant in my company … a Companion of two Russian Orders!… And it isn’t long since he and I …”

At last my father threw the Calendar on the sofa, and sank into a thoughtfulness which boded nothing good.

He suddenly turned to my mother: “Avdotya Vassilyevna, how old is Petrusha?”

“He is going on seventeen,” my mother answered. “Petrusha was born the very year when Auntie Nastasya Gerasimovna lost her eye and when …”

“Very well,” my father interrupted her; “it is time he went into the service. He has been running about the servant-girls’ quarters and climbing dovecotes long enough.”

My mother was so overwhelmed at the thought of parting from me that she dropped the spoon into the saucepan and tears flowed down her cheeks. My delight, however, could hardly be described. The idea of military service was connected in my mind with thoughts of freedom and of the pleasures of Petersburg life. I imagined myself as an officer of the Guards, which, to my mind, was the height of human bliss.

My father did not like to change his plans or to put them off. The day for my departure was fixed. On the eve of it my father said that he intended sending with me a letter to my future chief, and asked for paper and a pen.

“Don’t forget, Andrey Petrovich, to send my greetings to Prince B.,” said my mother, “and to tell him that I hope he will be kind to Petrusha.”

“What nonsense!” my father answered, with a frown. “Why should I write to Prince B.?”

“Why, you said you were going to write to Petrusha’s chief.”

“Well, what of it?”

“But Petrusha’s chief is Prince B., to be sure. Petrusha is registered in the Semyonovsky regiment.”

“Registered! What do I care about it? Petrusha is not going to Petersburg. What would he learn if he did his service there? To be a spendthrift and a rake? No, let him serve in the army and learn the routine of it and know the smell of powder and be a soldier and not a fop! Registered in the Guards! Where is his passport? Give it to me.”

My mother found my passport, which she kept put away in a chest together with my christening robe, and, with a trembling hand, gave it to my father.